


Dream of Me

by PuddinPop



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas is open about his feelings, Cas really loves Dean, Dean gets clingy when sick, Fever, Fluff, Is it reciprocated?, M/M, Minor Illness, Sick Dean, Sick Fic, Sickfic, all the feels, bed snuggles, caretaker cas, fever talk, kind of, self indulgent, trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 12:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7172612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuddinPop/pseuds/PuddinPop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a really silly prompt.</p><p>Dean has a fever and can’t sleep. He asks Cas to talk to him/tell him a story to help him sleep. Cas does, and he goes on to tell a lot more than he probably should when he thinks Dean is fast asleep. Dean, however, was not asleep and heard everything. Does he tell Cas he heard him or pretend like nothing even happened?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dream of Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackCatRunning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackCatRunning/gifts).



> Just a silly little fluffy thing I wrote for BlackCatRunning to celebrate her finishing her first year at grad school~!!
> 
> I hope you like this! It's pointless, it's fluffy, it's plotless, it was written on my phone at like 1am, hasn't been beta'd and is probably terrible but xDD
> 
> It probably will just be a one-shot but I MIGHT continue if I get a chance to. Probably not though, tbh.
> 
> ANYWAY~
> 
> I hope you like this, BCR (and everyone x33) and well done for completing your first year!! I am so proud of you <3

Three hours, four Tylenol, an impressive dose of NyQuil and even some of Bobby’s super-strength sleeping pills later and Dean was still wide awake.

He was currently stuck in the stark juxtaposition of the bed sheets clinging to him uncomfortably in damp patches across his sweat-addled skin and the insurmountable chills that wracked him so fiercely they made his teeth chatter if he removed them even slightly.

He fucking hated fevers.

He had picked this particularly glamorous infestation up after working a case in a hospital. Some ghost or spirit or oogey-boogey man, he didn’t know or care; the fever had fried his brain to the point where comprehensible thought was a challenge, never mind memory. Apparently being around hundreds of sick people for hours on end combined with eating a diet that consisted mainly of processed meat was not a good recipe for a healthy immune system. Sam had told him approximately six hundred times – _that day_ – that if he took care of himself better, he wouldn’t be suffering right now, but that sort of talk was exactly the reason why Dean had an angel tucked up in bed with him and not his brother. Sam could suck it honestly; he was usually the one to serve as Dean’s human heat-source whenever he was sick but the younger hunter had been such an insufferable dick since Dean’s symptoms first started that he was thankful for a break. Dean would have missed the contact if he hadn’t had Cas to cuddle up with, but as it was, he was quite contented; if somewhat annoyed.

Still, Cas didn’t seem to mind the constant shuffling, tossing, turning, coughing, sniffling and sneezing coming from the Dean-shaped mound beneath the blankets. More than that, he stayed completely silent – even completely _immobile_ except when he went to fill Dean’s glass with water or re-dampen the forehead cloth with cool water. Dean couldn’t deny that even the briefest brush of Cas’s cool hands against his fever-flushed face were satisfying; they felt even better than the cloth. But that was probably just the fever talking.

As they ticked over into the third hour of being in bed, a particularly harsh coughing fit rattled around Dean’s chest, causing him to sit up and double over, whooping in breaths between outbursts. Cas acted swiftly, almost military, as the water was thrust in Dean’s hand and a palm was flat against his back, smoothing across the taut, damp fabric of his shirt.

Lungs suitably sore, Dean laid back down and half-groaned/half-whimpered inwardly, the type of sound that a man makes when he is questioning what crime he has committed that was so heinous to deserve such a punishment. They were exactly Dean's thoughts; it was all he could think through the blazing inferno that encompassed his skin.

“Dean?”

It was the first word Cas had spoken since being summoned (by Dean) and banished (by Sam) to the bedroom.

“Wh’t izz’t, Cas?” Dean croaked, voice weak and cracking, barely a whisper through the mounting congestion in his lungs and torn tissue in his throat.

“Are you okay?”

The words were sincere, genuine care and concern woven behind the flat monotone of Cas’s usual ‘inside voice’ as Dean referred to it sometimes. The angel was still sitting up, holding the glass Dean had passed him before he resumedhis horizontal position. Barely a leg covered by the blankets and Dean began to shuffle around again; Cas had apparently given up in trying to cover himself, knowing that the sheets would be yanked from him in a matter of minutes.

Once settled back down, Dean tried to sigh through his nose before realising that those days were temporarily long-gone and he continued his sulk through his mouth., shivering slightly as he pulled the covers back up to his chin.

“’m peachy, Cas.” The words fooled no one. They even made Dean wince at how utterly tragic his voice sounded. 

“Is there anything I can do?” Cas said, his voice trembling just a little bit. It would have probably gone undetected on any other day, but Dean was on fever-alert and also had no other sounds in the room to distract him so heard it as loud as day. He had heard Cas speak in that tone of voice before and knew what it meant; after Naomi, Cas felt useless, expendable, like he wasn’t worth shit and was desperate to prove himself in any way possible. Apparently, this was just another of those ways and the thought of his friend – his _best_ friend – feeling so shitty ached Dean’s chest in a way that his cold couldn’t.

Rolling over to face Cas, only a pair of glassy eyes visible over the grubby sheets, Dean looked up to the angel and buried himself like a tic at Cas’s side, only stopping short of wrapping one arm across his waist. If it had been Sam, he would have had no problems doing that – they both knew how clingy Dean got when the thermometer beeped above 101 but Cas probably didn’t and he didn’t want to freak him out – but it wasn’t Sam; Sam was busy in the kitchen, probably preparing a meal of soup and saltines or tea and honey or some other gay shit that Sam loved to do. Dean didn’t care. He had Cas.

“Talk to me,” Dean eventually said in a small voice, almost forgetting that Cas had asked him a question.

“Dean, I don’t think you should be talking mu-“

“No, just _you_ talk. Tell me a story or something, I don’t know.”

Dean had his eyes closed at this point, frowning against his headache and annoyance that Cas hadn’t understood exactly what he wanted by his cryptic message.

“A story? I don’t-“

“Cas, you’re like a billion years old. You must have hundreds of stories.”

“Well, yes, but...”

“So tell me one!” 

He had tried not to sound petulant and childish but that was exactly how he sounded. His voice wobbled as though he were fighting back tears as it continued to crack and wave between syllables. He managed not to cry, but the shitty feeling that seeped down to the bone, the fever-heat rising off of him, the crippling fatigue and achy lungs combined to make a lethal recipe of one cranky Winchester. 

Cas had not seen Dean sick as many times as Sam had, but he had been at his bedside more times than he cared to count and had seen how the hunter could get when suffering from any kind of affliction, regardless of the severity. Sulky was the most accurate word that Cas could think of. Sulky and needy.

Smiling to himself, Cas sat himself back and sunk down the bed slightly, legs bunching up beneath the covers as his back rested flat against the cool wood of the headboard, Dean still tucked up beside his leg. It was like bringing a puppy home for the first time and it being scared by the new surroundings so wanting to sleep in the master bed for 'just one night'.

“Okay. Did I tell you that I was Heaven’s observer? Oh, you’re not meant to speak.” Cas looked down and noticed that Dean had no intention of speaking anyway. His breathing was already starting to even out. “All my brothers and sisters were destined for great things; Gabriel with his horn, Michael with his sword. Yet, I was left with nothing. I couldn't sing or create music; I was never much good with what humans refer to as 'motor skills' so I was never assigned a mission. I could do nothing... but watch. So that’s what I did, I _watched_. I watched everything: the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth... humanity. I saw it all, from a distance. These tiny flecks of organisms on what Father created...”

Castiel continued to talk for some time. Eventually, he had forgotten that he was even speaking to Dean and spoke as though he were reciting his memoirs for a ghost-writer, elaborating on every detail of heaven, his family, and earth. When he spoke of his family, his chest grew tight and he found himself reaching across and running fingers gently across Dean’s scalp. It was more a comfort notion than anything else, but for who it was meant to be comforting more – Dean or Cas – it wasn’t determinable. It wasn’t because Castiel _missed_ his family in heaven; quite the opposite. It was because he realised that his entire family was right there with him, all compacted inside the tiny bunker. Just Sam and Dean; he didn't need anyone else.

“I remember when I first saw you...” Cas continued airily, fingers still weaving between course spruts of hair, listening to Dean’s congested, level breathing. He was confident the hunter was asleep; he wouldn’t have continued otherwise.

“We-... _I_ was told to protect and save the righteous man, but... I never expected this. I always knew you were a good man, Dean, I could feel it in your soul from the very first moment. I just...” His voice trailed off for a second, eyes facing forwards against the dark wall barely lit by the light peering in through the cracks in the door from the hallway. 

“I didn’t think I would feel like this. The way I feel for you now... it feels like we have more than I could ever imagine. The stories I heard about you indicated that you were righteous but foolhardy and sheltered, I never knew...” He paused for a minute, swallowing, fingers still tracing through Dean’s hair. 

“I never knew angels could even feel emotions such as these.” It was said in an even tone, voice low and hushed as though Cas was concerned Sam might overhear. Leaning down, Cas got as close to Dean’s head as he could without disturbing him and rested his lips in Dean’s hair, pressing a firm but gentle kiss between the tresses. 

“Love. It’s such an over-used, human thing to feel, yet... I cannot explain this in any other way. It is not like what I felt for my brothers and sisters or even what I feel for Sam. This is different... _we’re_ different, and just...” He continued to speak into Dean’s hair, voice now so quiet that even if Dean had been awake, he would have struggled to hear it.

‘I love you, Dean.”

Again, Cas’s voice remained quiet and level, whispering at the back of his throat. He pressed his lips once more into Dean’s hair before manoeuvring himself around so he could stand, exiting the room with Dean’s empty glass in hand, planning to fill it ready for when he woke up.

Beneath the bed sheets, it had been an extreme battle not to sniff and to upkeep the charade of being asleep; he was afraid if he didn’t, Cas would have stopped talking. The pillow was damp with sweat and escaped tears that had managed to work their way out through the creases between Dean’s closed eyes as he listened to every word, his main focus being on keeping his breathing steady. 

The fever was definitely not helping with his emotions and the second that Cas left, Dean found himself beginning to sob softly into the darkness of the room, muffled into his pillow. Cas had just left but he already wanted the angel to return, to hold him tight and never let go. 

Sniffling into his pillow, shivering against the chills caused by the lack of body heat now that he no longer had someone else wedged against him, Dean curled into himself, bed sheets pulled over his head, eyes heavy with fatigue and emotion.

Mumbling into the pillow, Dean felt himself begin to drift into his unconscious, carried by fever-dreams.

“I love you too, Cas.”


End file.
